


I will not ask and neither should you

by messrblack



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: First Meetings, M/M, Strangers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-28
Updated: 2020-06-28
Packaged: 2021-03-04 04:08:03
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,270
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24957370
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/messrblack/pseuds/messrblack
Summary: It’s one of the rules that they have with each other, made when they were both just past tipsy at Remus’ flatmate’s birthday party, when they both felt out of place: No names, no identifying information, no phone numbers. No secrets. Remus regretted making every single one of them, had a feeling he would be the first to break them.
Relationships: Sirius Black/Remus Lupin
Kudos: 27





	I will not ask and neither should you

**Author's Note:**

> come say hi on tumblr! [@messrblack](https://messrblack.tumblr.com/)

II.

A tremor works its way up Remus’ spine; he knows the man is there. He can always feel the way the air changes around him, into something charged as though a gale-force wind has come to drag him away and into the sea that's miles and miles from the park. A branch snaps. The rustle of leaves. Pressure between Remus’ shoulder blades as a hand comes to rest there; solid, warm like it always is when they meet. He steps around Remus, sweeps his hand over until it rests atop his shoulder, giving a small squeeze in hello. His hand is hot through the denim of Remus’ jacket

"I was about to leave," Remus says. He doesn’t mean it, would have waited into the night for him. The man is cradling his motorcycle helmet beneath one arm. Remus has never asked about it. He shoves his free hand into the pocket of his leather jacket and brings his shoulders up against the wind; perhaps he can feel the same chill Remus does.

“Class ran late,” there’s a thread of remorse in his voice, “I would've called…” He lets the sentence trail off and Remus huffs a short laugh. 

“What class?” He gives Remus a crooked sort of smile and shakes his head. Too personal. It’s one of the rules that they have with each other, made when they were both just past tipsy at Remus’ flatmate’s birthday party, when they both felt out of place: No names, no identifying information, no phone numbers. No secrets. Remus regretted making every single one of them, had a feeling he would be the first to break them. 

He sits on the weathered bench beside Remus, asks, “did you speak with the doctor yet?”

A slight nod and a sigh. Remus had put off that conversation for nearly a week, piling on excuse after excuse of too much homework, of work, of social engagements he didn't have. His father has cirrhosis, is in the ICU with a failing liver; a host of infections sharing his blood and tissue and spreading until there’s no piece of him left untouched. Consuming him. Talking about it consumes Remus too.

“She says it won't be long now,” Remus waits for a woman to pass by with her small dog and whispers, “is it terrible that I don't want to be there when it happens?” The question hangs between them and wordlessly the man reaches into his pocket and pulls out a pack of cigarettes, a black lighter. Remus watches as the light from the setting sun catches on the black polish covering his nails when he lights the first cigarette and passes it to Remus. He does it with the practiced ease of routine, lighting the other for himself. Remus looks down at the toes of his boots and takes a long drag, holding it in his lungs until they are burning, screaming at him to release it.

“I don't think so,” the man says it on an exhale, and smoke curls up around Remus, “not after everything.” Remus nods, ashes his cigarette over the arm of the bench and watches it get swept up into the wind. “Just because he's your dad doesn't mean you owe him anything.”

Remus doesn’t know how to be the child of a dying parent. He never had to be when it was his mum and her car was hit head-on, crushed by a much larger truck, being driven much faster. He had never felt pain so tremendous in his life; the world felt too bright, too loud, and he had wished so hard to stop breathing, that he could be buried alongside her.

He feels an altered kind of pain with his father. It’s a mourning of the father he couldn't remember because Remus never really had him; one that was nurturing, sober, _present._ He feels guilt over his lack of grief. He knows he is on the cusp of being completely alone, but it feels as though he already has been for years. There’s something in the way the other man spoke that makes Remus think he too understands the feeling of being untethered.

“I don't know if I'd be able to get a ticket home in time anyway,” he shakes his head with a bitter laugh. Remus looks at the man and swallows hard against the lump in his throat. He has his head tilted back and his eyes half-closed, long hair falling against the back of the bench and Remus wonders what it would feel like running through his fingers. Remus’ phone starts to vibrate in his back pocket and he hears the man sigh. He silences the alarm and turns to look at him, “I'm sorry I couldn't stay longer.” Remus stubs the cigarette out on the pavement between his boots and tosses it in the bin beside the bench.

“Don't worry about it, babe,” the man speaks with his cigarette still between his teeth. The cherry has nearly reached the filter and it’s almost the same red as his lips.

“Next week?” The man stands, collects his helmet beneath his arm once more and nods, “here?” He shakes his head and smiles before turning his back to Remus. He watches the man leave and hopes he can feel it too; the magnetic pull that keeps Remus asking _when can I see you again_ and thinking _I hope this never ends, please don't let this be the last time I see you._

III.

“I think you paid last time,” the man’s hand settles on Remus’ shoulder as he approaches where Remus is sitting in an armchair at the back of the café. On the table beside him sits two oversized mugs, one with milky tea, the other, black coffee.

“Next time.” A squeeze on Remus’ shoulder, fingers playing at the neck of his jumper and he tilts his head back to better see him, flashes the man a smile before he notices. His face looks cadaverous; free of the light flush that blooms across his cheeks, the black hoop that’s always threaded through his nostril missing, the eyeliner he smudges along his lashes that Remus loves so much wiped clean. It looks like his eyes have been rimmed with a plum shadow instead. “Have the nightmares come back?”

He nods, sits gingerly in the chair across from Remus and reaches for his mug. “Have been since last Saturday,” he takes a sip of the coffee and squeezes his eyes shut. His fingers tap out a staccato rhythm against the blue ceramic. Remus can see bitten skin around his bare nails, the exhaustion etched in the lines on the man’s face. Something clenches painfully in his chest.

“Are they the same as before?” The man’s nightmares are unquestionably gruesome; tableaux of memories Remus wishes he had the power to erase for him. He wishes he could take them on for himself. The man knows the same truth intimately that Remus does; that hidden in the darkest corner of your mind was a map charting every wound that marred your skin and soul, and your subconscious would dig its fingers in hard and fast the moment you let your guard down. Remus slides his foot forward, pressing the outside of his against the man’s. He doesn’t move away. 

The man shakes his head and doesn't elaborate. Remus knows then that this will be one of their silent days, when the comfort of just _existing_ is greater than that of speaking. He doesn’t mind. He watches the man drink from the corner of his eye, watches him watch Remus back. He wonders, not for the first time, if two people as flawed and damaged as they are could ever have a normal life.

And Remus wonders if it’s at all possible to fall in love with someone when you only know the tragic, grim things about them. 

IV.

“Could we walk today?” Remus scuffs the toe of his boot over the pavement. He can feel his heart in his throat again.

The man puts out a hand and pulls Remus up to his feet. “Any updates?” he asks as he busies himself lighting their cigarettes. Remus doesn’t answer, and when the man passes Remus his cigarette, he sets it between his lips and simply shrugs. His father died the day before. He is due back home for his funeral the next morning. The man gives a sad sort of smile, tight-lipped and barely reaching his eyes, and grabs Remus’ hand once more. He can feel callouses on the tips of the man’s fingers that he was never allowed to feel before. The man doesn’t let go until they have walked the park in its entirety.

“We could run away,” Remus says before they were forced in opposite directions, staring down at his feet then looking up at the man with a bitter smile, “run away and grow old together. Stay strangers to everyone else forever.” Remus was familiar with the desire to run; he had always wanted to, felt it like a familiar itch just beneath his skin. _Away, away, away_ . What he never expected was to have the deep, urgent desire to run from himself, his inability to grieve for the man that never felt like his father. He never expected to have someone to run _toward_ , either.

The man’s expression matches Remus’ when he whispers, “just tell me when, babe” and presses a ghost of a kiss to his cheek. His cheekbone burns hot in the evening chill.

V.

Remus never believed in destiny or soulmates, always thought them to be silly ways for sad people to garner hope, but there was something indescribably fated in meeting the man. The same string of fate that led him to the birthday party where they had met one year prior.

He spots Remus immediately, squeezes his shoulder the way he had done in greeting every Tuesday for the last 52 weeks. Remus can smell the leather of his jacket and the menthol from his cigarettes when he leans close, plucking a crisp from the palm of Remus’ hand with a wink before going for a drink. He returns with two beers and passes one to Remus wordlessly. He can feel the bass pounding, rattling inside his ribcage and setting every one of his nerves alight.

Remus sees the man move from the corner of his eye, and when he turns the man is smiling, a hand extended for Remus to shake. “Sirius Black,” he says. It was the same voice Remus had heard for a year but it ran so much deeper now, had a name and so much _life_ pulsing behind it that it had been entirely void of until now.

His fingers are cold against Sirius’s palm and he clears his throat, “Remus Lupin.”

“It’s nice to meet you, Remus.” 

I.

Remus draws his feet up onto the chair, wraps his arms around his legs and rests his temple against the hard bone of his knee, rubs his face against the scratchy denim. He stares out the window, at the faint spray of stars barely visible in the light cast by the streetlights and waning moon. There's a cluster of people gathered in the back garden and Remus can see them dancing slow and languid to a song he can't hear enough of to name. 

James isn’t the worst flatmate. Not really. He does his dishes, always keeps the volume of his music down, and asks before inviting people over. He is exuberant and charismatic in ways that Remus is not, but Remus doesn’t resent him for it, just as James does not begrudge Remus for his introverted tendencies. Remus had only stayed at the party downstairs for an hour; long enough to say hello to Frank and Alice, to ask after the health of their new baby and Frank's aging mother, long enough to have one beer and a few crisps. 

All at once, the music rushes loud over him and he turns quick, fixes his eyes on the person hovering in his doorway.

"Fuck, sorry," his voice is hoarse, has probably been talking over the music all night. He's gripping the doorframe with one hand, his other hand reaching up to tuck errant strands of hair back behind his ear where they've fallen from a haphazard bun. His shirt stretches tight over his chest and lifts when his arm does. The black cotton is stark against his pale skin and Remus feels his mouth go dry. "I was looking for the bathroom? The one downstairs is being," he pauses, searching for a word, " _desecrated_ by James and Lily."

"Oh my God," Remus huffs a short laugh, he has walked in on James and Lily together a few too many times when he was unaware James was home at all. He releases his arms from around his legs and lets them drop back onto the floor.

The man grimaces, presses his shoulder to the door-jam and crosses his arms, "Lily is a lovely woman, my sister, really, but I would have happily gone my entire life without seeing her naked on the bathroom floor." That pulls a real laugh from Remus.

"Bathroom's at the end of the hall," Remus says and the man smiles, murmurs a quiet thanks and steps back into the hallway, closing the door softly behind him. Remus leans his head back against the chair, counts to ten slowly, and wills his heart rate to calm. He checks the time and decides that thirty minutes was a long enough break from the party. 


End file.
